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As teams are making their pushes toward the post season, a rash of mid-season call-ups have escalated the demand for quite a few prospect rookie cards resulting in an overwhelming demand and collectors paying out at some all-time highs for prices. For the month of August and possibly into late October, I can see that Gordon Beckham and his cards are going to very hot.
Here is the Top 25 Baseball Cards for August 2009:
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Topps has signed an exclusive deal with Major League Baseball, and starting 2010 will have an exclusivity on MLB, club trademarks, logos and other intellectual property for use on baseball cards, stickers and other product categories featuring MLB players.
What does this mean? Basically that no other card manufacturers will be able to show photography of players in their actual MLB uniform or use team logos on their product. Topps is hoping that this exclusivity will appeal to a new generation of enthusiasts and restore their reign as the crown jewel of the sports collecting world.
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Prospectors and collectors alike love the adrenaline rush from the mid-season prospect call-up or the rookie who was invited out of camp making it big in their first season of play. This year’s crop of recent call-ups and rookies have not let us down. Like previous seasons, some of our favorites and some dark horses have been putting up huge numbers on their first blush with the show.
Not only have these huge starts resulted in immediate pay-off for their big league club, it has resulted in a large pay-off for prospectors who have been sitting on a large stash, waiting for the right time to sell. Let’s take a look at some of the players making a large splash today:
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The month of July is synonymous with one thing: HOT. Throughout the month of June, I don’t think there was a player that was as hot as Tim Lincecum. The Freak amassed freakish numbers for the month that included 3 wins, 40 Ks, 1.82 ERA, 39.2 IP in 5 games started. Lincecum’s 2007 Bowman Chrome RC Auto has been reaching freakish prices too. Close on his heels for the month is Stephen Strasburg, who has yet to even sign a MLB contract, but continues to be the buzz around the shop.
Happy collecting!
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On Wednesday, a foursome of high-talent prospects, landed themselves on big-league rosters. Some of these arrivals have been very highly anticipated and publicized as to when these prospects would actually break the 40-man rosters, so now it seems as if those questions have been answered.
After being nearly unhittable in 11 games with the Triple-A Gwinnett Braves, Tommy Hanson posted a 3-3 record, 1.49 ERA, and had unbelievable 90 KOs through 66.1 IP. Signed by the Braves as a 22nd round pick in the 2005 Draft, Hanson has been considered a top prospect in both the Braves organization and all of minor league baseball. He was the 2008 Arizona Fall League MVP and was named to their All-Prospect Team. Expect to see some big jumps in the price on his 2007 Bowman Chrome RC.
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Over the weekend, our friends at BlowOutCards.com were having a sale on their 2009 Bowman Baseball boxes. I decided to buy one so that I could do a review of the product for all of my readers, as well as, hold the very first DailyWax Reader Contest. To enter the contest, simply reply to this entry with your name and email address (which will not be visible) along with your guess of which pack (1 through 24) will contain the Bowman Chrome Prospect Auto. If you correctly guess which pack contains the auto, I will mail you the card. In the event of multiple correct guesses, it will be randomly awarded to one of the correct guessers. You are only allowed to enter your guess once, multiple guesses from the same email address will result in disqualification from the contest. Be sure you use a valid email address, as I will be contacting the winner via email on where to send their prize. I plan on posting the results of the break as well as my review of the product sometime this week, so please check back for the results.
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At the ripe age of 23, the Baltimore Orioles phenom Matt Wieters has finally arrived. This highly anticipated event was put on hold coming out of Spring Training as the O’s decided to reassign Wieters instead of having him join the club at the beginning on the season. In 39 games for Triple-A Norfolk, Wieters batted .305 with 5 HR and 30 RBI. These numbers pale in comparison the physical number that Wieters posses, the 6-foot 5-inch, 230-pound frame of Matt is almost as freaskish in nature as the hype that has been surrounding him at his days at Georgia Tech.
While there is no sleeper watch to report here, many prospectors are looking to cash in on Wieters arrival. A number of his cards with very high price tags following closely to the hype that was around Jay Bruce as he made his debut last year. Wieters did not have the same instance success that Bruce did at the plate, but I have a feeling in the long run Matt will be far better than Jay.
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Topps recently released the information on their 2009 Topps Chrome Football set. The 220 card set will feature Topps famous chrome technology along with their famous refractor parallels. Along with the refractors, each hobby box will contain a autographed rookie card from one of 50 in the set. Each of these autographs will also be produced in a superfractor (1 of 1), gold (/10), and black (/25) variation. Included again in this years set is the Rookie Patch cards, were just exclusively in the hobby boxes.
Each of the base cards will be available in superfractor (1 of 1), red (/25), copper (/599), refractor, and printing plate variety. Each hobby box will contain 9 parallel cards.
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According to Yahoo Sports, Zach Greinke is currently listed as a Not Hot players on their Hot or Not list. I guess in his last two starts his ERA has ballooned from 0.60 to 0.84, allowing 3 ER over 15 IP, 2 BB, while having 16 KOs. I am not sure how this constitutes being placed on their Not Hot list, but I can assure you, that Greinke is anything but Not Hot. In fact, he may be the hottest player in the MLB this season and one of the brightest future stars in the league. He has already 5 complete games on the season, leads the league in wins (8), ERA (0.84), WHIP (0.88), and is second in K’s (81). With his freakish start to the season there has been a huge spike in the sales and value of some of his more sought after cards, like his 2002 Bowman Chrome RC, and 2002 Prospects Premiere Auto RC.
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The 20-year-old New York Mets phenom, Fernando Martinez, made his major league debut last Tuesday (5/26/2009) making him the youngest player in the MLB today. Today, Topps announced that F-Mart would be their first Red Hot Rookie redemption player. These redemption cards were randomly insert one-per-box in the 2009 Topps Series 2 Baseball packs. The cards can be redeemed online at topps.com.
In total, there are 10 Red Hot Rookies in the set, which will be announced throughout the rest of the baseball season.